Another "Lot's Wife"

Wislawa Szymborska's is the longest of these poems. I like it best but I'm an avid Szymborska fan, the turns of her mind always fascinate me.

They say I looked back out of curiosity,
But I could have had other reasons.
I looked back mourning my silver bowl.
Carelessly, while tying my sandal strap.
So I wouldn't have to keep staring at the righteous nape
of my husband Lot's neck.
From the sudden conviction that if I dropped dead
he wouldn't so much as hesitate.
From the disobedience of the meek.
Checking for pursuers.
Struck by the silence, hoping God had changed his mind.
Our two daughters were already vanishing over the hilltop.
I felt age within me. Distance.
The futility of wandering. Torpor.
I looked back not knowing where to set my foot.
Serpents appeared on my path,
spiders, field mice, baby vultures.
They were neither good nor evil now -- every living thing
was simply creeping or hopping along in the mass panic.
I looked back in desolation.
In shame because we had stolen away.
Wanting to cry out, to go home.
Or only when a sudden gust of wind
unbound my hair and lifted up my robe.
It seemed to me that they were watching from the walls of Sodom
and bursting into thunderous laughter again and again.
I looked back in anger.
To savor their terrible fate.
I looked back for all the reasons given above.
I looked back involuntarily.
It was only a rock that turned underfoot, growling at me.

Lot's Wife, Akhmatova

Yesterday's poem inspired Jonas to post Katherine Kaufman's poem, "Lot's Wife" in the comments -- I urge anyone reading this to go back one post, click comments, and read it because we're on a roll. Kaufman was inspired by Akhmatova's poem which is below. Tomorrow I will post one of the same name by Wislawa Szymborska. Each has a different point of view. I think Lot's wife is a kind of litmus for women poems, I will research whether there are more, I think there might be.

"Lot's Wife" by Anna Akhmatova [translated by StanleyKunitz and Max Hayward]

And the just man trailed God's shining agent,
over a black mountain, in his giant track,
while a restl late,you can still look back

at the red towers of your native Sodom,
the square where once you sang, the spinning-shed,
at the empty windows set in the tall house
where sons and daughter blessed your marriage-bed.

A single glance: a sudden dart of pain
stitching her eyes before she made a sound ...
Her body flaked into transparent salt,
and her swift legs rooted to the ground.

Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem
too insignificant for our concerns?
Yet in my heart I never will deny her,
who suffered death because she chose to turn.